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<Title>Vessel orientation</Title>
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<h1>Vessel orientation</h1>
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This page allows to change the orientation of a vessel in free flight. You can either specify the <i>Euler angles</i> of the vessel frame with respect to the global ecliptic frame of reference, or you can <i>rotate</i> the vessel around its pitch, yaw and bank axes.
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The Euler angles <i>&alpha;</i>, <i>&beta;</i> and <i>&gamma;</i> define the rotation matrix <b>R</b> which transforms from the vessel local frame to the global ecliptic frame as follows:
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<img src="rmat.gif">
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More intuitively, you can rotate the vessel around its local axes by pressing the pitch, yaw and bank buttons. The pitch buttons rotate around the vessel x-axis, the yaw buttons around the y-axis, and the bank buttons around the z-axis.
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If the vessel is part of a composite structure (e.g. a spacecraft docked to a space station), the whole structure will be rotated.
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The rotation settings have no effect for vessels on the ground.
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